FreeRDP as a replacement for rdesktop in UCS TCS
From Univention Wiki
Note: UCS Thin Client Services (UCS TCS) is deprecated and will be replaced by its successor Univention Corporate Client (UCC). UCS TCS 3.1 will stay under maintainence until December, 31st 2013.
For information about the migration to Univention Corporate Client, have a look at Upgrade TCS / UCD to UCC.
Installation
Note: If the architecture of the server hosting the thin client environment is amd64, you need to enable the i386 repository to install packages for the Thin Client environment:
univention-config-registry set repository/online/architectures="i386 amd64"
To enable the repository containing FreeRDP and its wrapper, execute the following command in a commandline shell:
univention-config-registry set repository/online/component/freerdp-ucd-experimental=yes \ repository/online/component/freerdp-ucd-experimental/parts=unmaintained
Additionally, the unmaintained part of the standard repository must be activated:
univention-config-registry set repository/online/unmaintained=yes
To install FreeRDP and its wrapper into the Thin Client environment, execute the following command in a commandline shell:
univention-thin-client-apt install libasound2-plugins freerdp-wrapper
The login procedure for a RDP session (Terminalservices or UCS DVS) did not change, only the program establishing the RDP connection has been swapped.
Configuration
To prepare a Thin Client to be used to properly work with RDP sessions, some settings must be changed. These settings are optional, but recommended to ensure the user's best experience.
Open the Thin Client computer object in the UDM and check Show the advanced settings. Next, open the tab [Univention Configuration Registry] and enter the following UCR variables to enable sound and USB keys for the DVS session:
Variable: thinclient/sound/daemon Value: None
Variable: thinclient/usbdevice/local value: yes
Next, switch to the tab [Client Devices] and make sure Activate access to client devices is activated. Now, switch to the [Sound Settings] tab and check that Sound enabled is enabled. Optionally you may select a sound driver from the drop down list or (recommended) select auto detect.
Save the changes and the Thin Client is now properly set up to be used with all features of your RDP sessions.
If your configuration works properly, we recommend to apply the policy based setting globally or connect them to a superior Organizational Unit (OU) or Container (CN) in your directory.
Multi-monitor setup
If you have a multi-monitor setup in use, FreeRDP tries to establish a true multi-monitor session. This means, that you have as many separate desktops to use as monitors are available and configured. If the RDP-server does not support a true multi-monitor setup, all screens will be combined to a large screen spanning over all available monitors.
Currently the following Microsoft Windows OS support a true multi-monitor setup:
- Windows 7 Ultimate edition
- Windows 7 Enterprise edition
- Windows Server 2008 R2
To enable multi-monitor support for Thin Clients, setup a second monitor in the Thin Clients computer object using the UDM.
